Embodiments of the invention are directed to managing email in an enterprise environment. In particular, embodiments described herein are directed toward intelligent offload of work to handle peak activity in an enterprise email system.
Email messages can be transmitted from a sender to one or more recipients. Email messages can be text messages or can include other content computer-readable files attached to the messages. Email clients typically provide a technique for specifying different recipients either in the “to,” “cc” (carbon copy or courtesy copy) or “bcc” (blind carbon copy or blind courtesy copy) fields. In addition, some email clients, allow users to mark a message as having high, average or low importance. These markings are intended to communicate information to the recipient.
Email messages are generally transmitted from a sender to one or more recipients by message transfer agents or one or more mail servers. Mail servers generally communicate with email clients using a client-server architecture. A mail server or message transfer agent (MTA) can receive email messages from either another MTA, a mail submission agent (MSA) or a mail user agent (MUA). MSAs and MUAs implement the client side of the client server model and are thus referred to herein as “email clients.”
Email messages, especially those transmitted through corporate mail servers, tend to be sent at identifiable “peak times” of the day and the week. For example, most businesses have typical beginning of the day, end of the day, and lunch hours. Accordingly, company mail servers may operate at a high capacity during the beginning of the day and end of the day hours, while idling or running at a low capacity at night, during the weekend, and during the lunch hour. Additionally, some mail messages are more time-sensitive than others. For example, a manager of group of engineers in New York might arrive in the office at 9:00 AM and send an email to her associates communicating that she wants them all to be present at a meeting at 10:00 AM. In contrast, the same manager could send an email to her son attending a university in California, attaching a family photograph. It is less critical that the email message reaches the son quickly because the son might be sleeping or attending lectures, and would not have time to check his email until later in the afternoon.